S.F.'s homey Sunset fights housing blight

On San Francisco

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, November 18, 2008

nevius_0084_df.jpg
C.W. Nevius, columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle. Photographed in San Francisco on 8/3/06.
(Deanne Fitzmaurice/ The Chronicle)

nevius_0084_df.jpg
C.W. Nevius, columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle. Photographed in San Francisco on 8/3/06.
(Deanne Fitzmaurice/ The Chronicle)

Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice, The Chronicle

S.F.'s homey Sunset fights housing blight

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Out in the avenues, tidy two-story flats line the streets of what is traditionally one of the city's most family-friendly areas. And then there are the black holes.

The Sunset District turns out to be the perfect breeding ground for a thorny neighborhood problem - rundown, drug-infested, blighted homes. As neighbors watch the trash pile up in the driveway and see strangers entering and leaving the house at all hours, they imagine their housing values plummeting.

What can be done? In the big picture, the answer is not much. It isn't as if the problem owners can be forced to sell their property.

Yet neighbors are winning small victories against their bad neighbors, thanks in part to a vigorous effort by the police. In this city, we're quick to complain about what can't be done. Instead, we should be celebrating these small victories. They're adding up to something important.

"There are laws on the books," she said. "You just have to find them. I track down all the reports on the address, run the location (through computer searches), and then I pester the bejesus out of the city attorney assigned to us."

The idea is to simply keep up the pressure, bringing public nuisance lawsuits if necessary. Residents at the rundown house know that the police are taking an extra interest and the neighbors feel that their complaints are being heard.

"This is community policing," Chignell said. "The model we are trying to install is to identify these places and then let the sergeants and sector (patrol) cars come up with a plan to deal with them."

Chignell and Sgt. Steve Quon took me to a house in the Inner Sunset. It is an area of well-maintained homes with clipped bushes and blooming plants in the front yards. It looked like a great place to live - except for the house at the end of the block, where a rusting car sat in the driveway.

The place was a mess. The windows were covered up, an overturned armchair spilled its stuffing on the sidewalk, and random truck parts were stacked next to the front steps. Quon and Chignell said they were almost certain that methamphetamine dealing was taking place inside.

Unless they catch the dealers red-handed, that's hard to prove. So instead, they are trying to nag them into either cleaning up or clearing out.

"The key is to just keep coming by over and over again," Quon said.

The officers are helped by the fact that meth users are not exactly criminal masterminds. For example, last week at the spot, an officer found an unregistered truck. That gave him reason to run checks on the occupants, discovering that one of them was wanted on a no-bail drug warrant.

Alex Tse, who is the head of code enforcement for the city attorney's office, said he has noticed a trend in the city.

"What we are seeing is the owners of the homes have passed away or moved away, and the house is now in the hands of adult children," Tse said. "That's just been a recent trend, but you definitely have a senior population of homeowners."

Obviously, in most cases the adult children who take over the home are responsible owners. But in some cases, drug users or dealers use the new house as a business opportunity. Even worse is when the kids strong-arm the parents and take over.

"We definitely see cases of elder abuse," said Sgt. Robert Padrones, also of Taraval Station, who works in some of the rougher areas of the south Sunset. "But the only time we know something is going on is when we get calls from the neighbors."

That's what happened with another house in the Inner Sunset. When we stopped by, the front yard was crowded with random lawn ornaments, abandoned tools, and trash. Chignell went to the front door and spoke to one of three brothers living in the house with their elderly mother.

It wasn't the first time Chignell and Quon had been there. They'd made some arrests there earlier for drug violations and warned the residents that they were on the verge of a public nuisance lawsuit. The message appeared to have been received.

One of the brothers said his mother had served notice that she wanted the unsavory friends of one of the other brothers to move out. That group had been responsible for a lot of the noise, trash, and drug activity.

The officers were skeptical that it would happen, but at least the family was moving in the right direction. Besides, if improvements weren't forthcoming, there were sure to be other violations. A check of the license plate of a motorcycle parked in front, for example, showed that the registration had expired.

That's the deal with nuisance houses. Not only are they easy to find, the residents make it simple to pressure them.

"It's like they are advertising," Burns said.

All it takes is persistence and follow through by the police.

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